More and more companies are deciding to migrate their portfolio of Visual Basic 6.0 applications using a Migration Factory Model where knowledge, tools, methodologies and resources are reused. A successful Visual Basic 6.0 migration to .NET in a migration factory model can bring enormous benefits if executed correctly and a lot of pain if not.

For that reason, here is a list of factors that should be taken into account by your factory teams to minimize pains, risks and ensure success:

Use a proven methodology to do software migrations from VB6 to .NET. ArtinSoft can help you review and tune your migration methodology based on years of experience to help mitigate risks and execute cost-effective migrations.

Knowledge transfer – Every migration project is different but having a knowledge base of best practices, learnings and manual changes in place and updated with every project, will give you a great tool to successfully complete your projects. Within your migration methodology you need to make sure that your teams are constantly updating this repository, especially during the manual changes phase. Developers won’t have to spend time doing research, trial and error exercises or navigating in the internet since the solution will be in this repository.

VBUC customizations are a key part of a migration methodology in a factory model. These customizations will increase the automatic migration rate, minimize manual work on pending projects and ensure that effort, duration and financial goals will be achieved. The knowledge base created during the migration process is the best input for VBUC customizations. You need to ensure that knowledge is gathered and store in a repository at all times.

Reengineering versus functional equivalence – Integrating source code migration work with reengineering work will drastically increase the complexity of your migration project. Whenever possible, plan for a staged migration where you achieve functional equivalence first and then work on reengineering tasks.

For optimal migration factory team performance, communication is a key. Not always everything is documented so besides the knowledge base, you need to integrate the different teams to learn from each other.

Dependencies between projects may minimize the ability to migrate projects in parallel. During the detailed assessment phase you need to work o a migration plan where you clearly define the dependencies between the different projects in your portfolio. You usually do this by using the VBUC in assessment model, application surveys, priorization lists and interviews with application developers.

The migration factory requires migration experts especially at early stages of the process. Be aware of training your people in advanced to be productive at early and not middle stages of the migration process.